Common Threads Farm

Our vision is of a world where:
All children have the resources, information, and experiences needed to make healthy food choices every day.
Adults make choices that set kids up for life of healthy eating.
Learning about and eating healthy food is understood as an integral part of any good basic education.

Our primary strategy is hands-on gardening and cooking programs in schools.

Schools are an ideal place to connect kids to healthy food because even children whose parents may have limited knowledge about healthy food or limited resources to spend on food can begin to develop life-long healthy eating habits at school.
Common Threads currently gardens, cooks, and eats with over 7000 children annually and collaborates with teaching and food service staff across five school districts . Our aim is to make healthy eating the easy, accessible and joyful choice for youth who too often lack the resources or experiences needed to develop good eating habits.

Long-term behavioral changes in how children eat necessarily involve long-term changes in how adults feed them. With this in mind, our school-based food education programs include family cooking events and recipes sent home. Families frequently report that they tried new foods in their homes because of the recipes and enthusiasm that their children brought home after cooking with Common Threads. A great example is a dad who recently attended a family cooking event at Cordata elementary. This dad shared with us that he works nights, and finds cooking healthy food for himself and his daughter difficult. He also shared that he has recently started to be more intentional about making healthy meals for himself and his daughter, and the key motivator was his daughter coming home excited about healthy and quick recipes from Common Threads!

Common Threads places an AmeriCorps Food Educator in each partner school. The Food Educator works collaboratively with teachers and food service staff to connect kids to healthy food through gardening, classroom cooking, after school and summer cooking clubs, and family focused healthy food events – all of which are designed to align with the standards-based demands that classroom teachers are asked to fulfill.

Common Threads currently has five core staff who oversee all program operations:
Laura Plaut, Executive Director, founded Common Threads in 2007 and has grown the program from a small summer camp to an organization with a $700K+ annual budget. Laura describes Common Threads as the program she wishes someone had offered her when she was a kid, and believes that joyfully connecting kids with healthy food is one of the easiest "upstream" interventions to curb the incidence of hunger, diabetes, obesity and other food related illnesses. Laura is a current co-convener of the WSDA Farm to School School Gardeners Community of Practice and has served on the Bellingham Public School’s Good Food Values committee since that group's inception in 2010. Laura holds a Masters’ Degree in Nonprofit Administration.
Jenna Deane, Education Program Manager, supervises half of our team of AmeriCorps Food Educators and coordinates training and curriculum. Her background includes over a decade of work as a naturalist and as a school gardener. Jenna holds a B.A. in Environmental Education.
Erika Beaudin, Farm and Kitchen Program Manager, supervises half of our team of AmeriCorps Food Educator and coordinates garden development and stewardship. Erika brings a background in homesteading and small business ownership.
Jessica Moerman, Communications and Evaluation Manager, oversees all program evaluation and communications (website, newsletter, social media), and supports grants contract management and reporting. She holds a Masters in Community Development.
Margo Heffron, Systems Manager, supports everything from reporting to volunteer recruitment to procurement of materials and supplies. Margo holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Economics and served as an AmeriCorps Food Educator with Common Threads prior to joining our staff in 2020.
Our capacity is greatly increased thanks to partnerships with:
Schools and partner nonprofits across three counties and seven school districts.
AmeriCorps (through Serve Washington, the State Commission on Volunteerism and Service) - Common Threads has hosted AmeriCorps members since 2010. We currently recruit, train, and support a team of 18-23 AmeriCorps service members.
SNAP Ed - we have been a SNAP Ed provider since 2016 with a focus on Policy, Systems, and Environments (PSE) work that fosters food access.
USDA reimbursable meals through Washington’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Child Nutrition Program.
Other local nonprofits for projects such as the ClimeTime teacher training program

Other community partners include the Bellingham and Foothills Food Banks, the East Whatcom Regional Resource Center, and several affordable housing complexes.

Common Threads currently gardens and cooks with over 7000 youth annually. Most of this activity occurs on public school grounds during the school day.

We have helped to prime the pump for kids' enthusiasm for healthy eating both in the school cafeteria and at home.

We have also gotten families more excited about healthy eating through family cooking nights and recipes sent home.

Our work will not be done until learning about healthy eating is considered as normal and as important as learning about math, literacy, and music.